Back to Work

So March was full of sick children and snowy holidays April on the other hand was much more fun, I actually ran 4 sessions of the new Marvel Heroic RPG (MHRP) and 2 sessions of Call of Cthulhu (COC).

Unfortunately this put all the war gaming stuff on the back burner. I had hoped to do some posts about MHRP and COC but all my spare time was going into writing for the game so I was too burnt out to do  writing about the game.

Anyway both games have reached the end of their current arc and with a trip to Salute yesterday and some new Pendraken goodies time to head East again and get the next battle in our 4 game mini Kursk campaign sorted.

Operation Citadel 1943: Campaign Turn 1

First game in the campaign is complete... 

You can see how the German win has effected the overall possible outcome of the Campaign. Russians still have a shot at victory but need to win the next battle at Cherkaskoye or the best they can hope for is a draw.

Original draft for the campaign structure
Butovo scenario
Butovo battle report

Losses
I'm also going to track the losses incurred for fun and figure them into the scenarios somehow so watch them trucks and armour losses Germans!

Russians
Infantry 5
Infantry Anti-Tank Rifle 2
Heavy Machine Gun 2

Germans
Infantry 2
Stug 2
PzIV 1
Truck 1

Battle Report: Butovo Operation Citadel 4th July 1943

Saturday saw the chaps gather to try out the Butovo Scenario (full details for the scenario and TOE can be found  here).

Table Set-up. Gray squares are minefields (2 dummies)

73d Guards Anti Tank Dig in

Soviet lines are drawn

Butovo

General Von Cleweswitz on recon. 

The German deployment plan

Russian fire plan

Delays to the German arrival and inability to get off multiple orders works to their advantage as they  avoid the Russian HE assets

T

2nd turn Russian Assets 

PzIVs unaffected by the Arty. However on the next command test their HQ found their radio had been damaged (blunder led to -1CV).

Germans take a wide berth of the field

3d turn and the ruthless Russians shell their own positions. Again the tardy Germans fail to oblige

Germans deploy for assault on hill 233

German firepower finally dislodges and destroys  1 infantry stand,  the 2d stand  is rooted out by assault. Germans seize the lightly defended objective but not before the Russian infantry claim a stand of Heer from reaction fire.

The Russian Maxim gave the German central effort a lot of problems, keeping the  PAK 40 suppressed.

Germans expose the weak left  flank of the Russian defenses, but can they carry Butovo?

Turn 8 and honors even

The Russians scramble to redeploy their forces  to the Eastern outskirts of Butovo.

Mr 1/36  improves the weather.

Germans take advantage of their improved CV and assault Butovo in force whilst the Russians  who have had good command all game struggle to get orders off and fail to reinforce the Eastern edge.

PzIVs go on a spree, completing 6 orders in a row and with the help of their supporting infantry blow away 5 Russian stands and their HQ! Suddenly the Germans have managed to contest Butovo and reap the 2 extra VP for doing twice as much damage. 

Turn 12 end of game situation in Butovo

Turn 12 Russians hold the hill in the foreground (2VP)  German Stug battery that was tasked with assaulting the hill was destroyed by ATG fire. Butovo (3VP) is contested. Germans hold hill in the background (2VP)

Final scores on the board. Germans carry the day with 3 VP (1 objective and inflicted more casualties) to the Russian 2VP

Final thoughts, this was a great game to watch. For a long while the Germans struggled to make any headway and it looked like they would sustain too many losses to take Butovo. Then suddenly their luck changed (literally with the weather) and they punched through. Very close game, well fought.

Scenery  looks great. Great work from General Sutov in producing so much terrain for the game.

The scenario seems pretty well balanced. The BKC system is great.

Will be updating the campaign situation and working up the next scenario which will be an attack on the Russian Main Line of Resistance, stay tuned...

Kursk Scenery update III

Mini update today.

I spent an hour and a half base coating the hills and modular river sections last night. Woke up this morning to find little white spots of poly-filler still showing through, grrr.

Next time I will try mixing the colour into the poly filler. Would certainly save some time and avoid the issue of bits getting chipped off to reveal the filler behind that always occur when packing up after a few too many beers.

More excitingly here is a pic of General Sutov's Gunpit and Trench creations. The General has been cranking these out for Saturdays game along with the other required field works (which IIRC I was supposed to be doing). Great work buddy.

Operation Citadel 4th July 1943: Butovo

Major General A.I. Baksov's 67th Guards Rifle Division (GRD) of 22nd Guards Rifle Corps was defending astride the main road that ran from Borisovka northward through Butovo and Cherkasskoe to Oboian. His right flank covered by the 71st GRD. 10km to the rear the 90th GRD backed up by the 6th Tank Corps of the 1st Tank Army formed a second echelon defenses along the Pena river. The 67th defended a 14km sector along a low generally treeless ridge line. The main routes into Baskov's positions ran northward along either side of the village of Butovo.

Baksov created a security belt that ranged from two to four kilometers in front of his main defenses anchored  on Butovo.

Preliminary fighting started shortly after 1600 hours on on 4 July 1943 in the south, as Fourth Panzer Army had elected to try to take the Soviet outposts prior to the main assault on July 5. 

Advanced Battalions of Großdeutschland's Grenadier Regiment and 11th Panzer Division attacked Butovo and the high ground around Butovo in torrential rain.  

Map used with permission from the Spearhead Yahoo group.

Soviet TOE

German TOE

Weather

Poor Weather -1Cmd penalty. See page 24 BKC II

Deployment 

Soviets deploy first up to one third of the table.
Germans nominate a player as their Recon element. Gets 1D3x30 seconds in the room with a map of the table. May mark, measure and take notes of the Soviet deployment. May not ask any questions.

Germans can then formulate their plan, divide up their units into formations and should use the map to mark where each formation will enter the board from (note xcm from left hand corner). Germans deploy opposite and use mobile deployment.

Game Length

12 Turns, the Germans take the first turn.

Objective

Calculate the number of victory points at the end of 12 turns. The following terrain features are all objectives; Hill 228.4 +2VPs, Butovo +3VPs and Hill 223 +2VPs. Inflicting more casualty points than casualty points taken (but not twice as many) +1VP, Inflicting at least twice as many casualty points than casualty points taken +2VP. Decide the winner as per page 36 BKC II.

Kursk Scenery Update II

Some pics of my new modular river sections. Really happy with the way these are coming on.

Lots of different ways these can be fitted together and like hills these are good for pretty much any period, place or game, 40K, SAGA, ACW, maybe even Force on Force.

Going to need at least a second and maybe third bridge piece, but have plenty of girder sections left and the bridge section was just a piece of plasti-card so easy to make.

I'm thinking of leaving the bridge free floating on the piece so it can be removed and used as a river piece cutting through a hill.

Battle Report: Sinelnikovo, the Ukraine, 21 February 1943

Last night was our first game of Blitzkrieg Commander after about a 5 year hiatus.

It was a test not only of the bravery and tactical acumen of General Sutov and Commander Von Cleweswitz but also a test of learning a new rule set, new scenery and playing an untested scenario, with unbalanced forces. A far cry from our normal style of "you pick 1750 point's I'll pick 1750 points and we both line up and try to kill each other"...although there was to be fair a lot of trying to kill each other took place.

Anyway enough waffle, on with the battle report 

Sinelnikovo, the Ukraine, 21 February 1943 or "The Second World War is fundamentally broken"

Russian turn 1
The Motorized Rifle Battalion comes in on the German left flank, the tank Company Commander blows his orders roll and they remain lurking off table. 

German Deployment, yellow post its are trenches/gun pits

German turn 1
Germans quickly limber up a Pak 40 and move it up onto the hill on their left flank so they can get shots off at the trucks packed with infantry, luckily for General Sutov the CO is unable to issue enough orders and the Germans do not get to unlimber until turn 2.

Russian turn 2

T34's arrive and power down the German right flank. making up time with a fortuitous double order (snake eyes on the order dice). You can see the German FAO lurking in the woods (proper model pending)











General Sutov gives the order to his infantry to dismount (note heroic pose).

Commander Cleweswitz relaxing

Russian Tanks make quick progress on the German right flank ignoring the best efforts of the off table German 150mms and Pak 40s to supress them.

Commander Cleweswitz learns the difference between a dug in Pak and a Pak that is only in cover..i.e. one dead Pak

Germans get bored and decide to launch an Infantry assault on the malingering Russian Motorized Div. Much to everyone's surprise they managed to carry out an effective attack stopping the infantry cold.

Russians already unable to effect an early turn 8 breakout decide to get on with it and power past the German positions completing a minor Russian victory on turn 11.

Summary

Scenery

The table looked great. the door matt fields fitted right in at the 10mm scale and considering they took 5 minutes to cut up and cost £5 totally exceeded expectations. May well cut one or two of them in half again for a bit more flexibility in organising them. Ed's N Guage trees look great (I got mine through the mail today) but I will be making some smaller mdf bases for them to stand on to suplement the large area 28mm scale ones I used last night (I think you need a lot of small pieces of scenery for 10mm). Special shout out to General Sutov for bringing along a stream and finishing off painting his entire village, lovely work mate. I will be cutting some base boards to stand buildings on just so it's clear when stands are in built up areas, but plan to leave the buildings free standing so we can mess about with arrangement add/remove as required. Hills are good, about the right size. At first when I laid out the scenery the table felt very cluttered but in game it seemed to work OK, allowing for Russian manoeuvres but forcing extra command checks as units transitioned between terrain types.

Rules

Blitzkrieg Commander is a dice-fest no mistake. Rolling to issue orders, to hit, saves and then suppression really adds up. We couldn't work out if you could roll multiple units attacks at once, we thought no, because a second suppression equals a fall back. Would be nice if it was all simplified into a single roll that took into account the chance to hit/kill/suppress. Shall have to see how it scales and obviously we'll get quicker with practice. On the plus side it does seems to model the action  well with formations grinding to a halt, stands getting suppressed and left behind, units in the open being gunned down but dug in troops are like ticks. There's a fair amount of crunch and it fits my reading of the theme. 

Would have helped if I had cheat sheets for the units statistics so that the two Commanders could have referenced rather than waiting for me to flick between rules and army lists, will get that done for next time. In fairness they had memorized (or were just making up) quite a bit by the end of the game.  General Von Cleweswitz noted that the way the order system is set up front loads the tension into the orders phase instead of the normal stress over if you hit or not (he still couldn't suppress anything).  

Scenario

See previous post for scenario details. After being presented with his rather meagre force of infantry and the news that the Panzer Faust was not going to be issued to his troops for at least another 6 months General Von Cleweswitz pointed out that "The Second World War is fundamentally broken". The Russian's do have a large advantage in their armour and were able to affect a breakthrough on turn 11 shrugging off the Artillery and Paks. General Sutov was convinced he could have done it much quicker but got distracted slowing down to have a pop at the Germans. He's probably right, although if the German CO and a bit more of the infantry had been present on the right hand flank...anyway the game was fun to watch and it looked like they were enjoying it so result.

I would like to return to it again and see if the Germans can win it or if it needs a tweak. The German infantry certainly gave the Russian Infantry a bloody nose outside Sinelnikovo. In all I'm happy with the forces and scenario, it was certainly fun planning them out. Would be good to run as a learning scenario with the rest of the gang.

Whole thing played out in about 4 hours and that included all the rules questions a couple of beers and a bottle of red.

I think the historical research element adds a lot of enjoyment for me, I just can't be bothered to make up stuff for totally fictional universes.